The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  The woman became red as a beet. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I have my hands full.”

  With a slight move of his head, he sent her away and got up to turn the key in the door. “Please.” He offered Natasha one cup then, after picking up another one, positioned himself on the opposite corner of the sofa.

  She took a sniff of the thick, brown substance then slurped at it but did not enjoy it. Like castor oil.

  Before drinking his coffee, he dipped his hand between the seating cushions, fished out a tiny round capsule with yellow-blue-red markings, unscrewed its cap, and dropped something into his mouth. In no time, he became more animated. “I have some sweets for you.” His mouth curved into a smile as he pulled a bar of chocolate from his briefcase.

  Natasha took it with an inner shudder of gratitude and, after breaking off a tiny piece and savoring it while holding it against the roof of her mouth so it melted slowly, raised her eyes to him. She was surprised by how vague her feelings toward this man were. Not at all handsome, there was some gentleness in his face and his manners and, despite her prejudice against him, she resolved to endure her role for a good cause.

  “As soon as the music stops, please start making noises.”

  “Noises?” She smirked.

  “Yes, that nosy creature must think we are making love.”

  “But why noises? We usually make no noises when we—” She giggled.

  “I know why. Your people live in communal apartments or share a house with relatives.”

  The music stopped, only the hissing of the record still coming from the gramophone. Natasha forced herself to shriek, “Oh, please no!” Hahn pinched her forearm, as though urging her to produce another scream. Natasha got it. Between his pretended loud grunting and groaning and her screaming, “Yes, yes!” he whispered into her ear, “This is to pass on.” He pushed into her hand a similar capsule marked Pervitin.

  “What am I supposed to—”

  “Not my business.” He cut her short. “I can only say the information is critical.”

  39

  Ulya

  March 1942

  Every day was exactly the same as the day that had gone before. Each morning met Ulya with a mound of paperwork on her desk. She kept translating the endless orders and directives of the German Authority into Russian and reports from the Civil administration for the Germans, but also the leaflets for the population, which she then would find posted everywhere. The early birds, before the leaflets would be ripped off, could see them stamped with words like “Death to German occupiers!” The Underground in action.

  The information she gathered was overwhelming. She no more trusted her memory and, despite a great risk, switched to photographing documents with the small camera hidden in the cigarette lighter. The crevice above the doorpost in the toilet room provided enough space to hide the valuable roll of film.

  Occasionally, while handing her an especially thick bunch of papers, Klimko would say with fake politeness, “I wonder if you could ever get through all that by six.” Sometimes, adding, “Do you need a hand?” To which one day she asked him if he was not satisfied with her work. His face twisted with what she read as annoyance and next morning, he brought a young woman with him. “Nina taught German in the school. She’ll help you.” Without waiting for Ulya’s reaction, he walked out. Nina turned out to be a nice woman who could not type.

  All other women Klimko sent to her occasionally, Ulya rejected on the pretext that one made many mistakes while typing, the other one was too slow, the next one seemed to state her skills only to get a ration card and begged Ulya not to report her to Klimko. But Ulya did. Such cases, considered a ruse for gaining personal benefits, were dealt with by execution. To the liar’s luck, she turned out to be Klimko’s distant relative. That last incident stopped him from sending her helpers. No one hindered her mission any longer.

  One day, she was snapping away when the door flew open. She slipped the camera between the files and turned to see a man in his early fifties in a good wool European style coat and felt hat in striking contrast to what Ulya’s eyes were accustomed to. “Fräulein Kriegshammer, Hauptsturmführer Hammerer awaits you.” He spoke in good Russian with a mild accent. She tried to decipher where it might have originated but was not sure.

  With a sickening flutter in her chest, she slipped into her coat and followed the man outside. To keep up with him, she had to go almost at a trot. They proceeded along Suvorov Street and, after turning to the left, toward the Holy Assumption Cathedral. The appalling realization came to her of where she was being taken—Uspenskaya Street 7, the two-story building of the former theological seminary. She knew the Einsatzkommando-9 had its quarters there. According to the rumors which circulated in the city, the rooms on the first floor were adapted as torture chambers and the entrance to the basement led to the jail.

  Hauptsturmführer Hammerer, elegant in his decorated uniform as she remembered him, got up from his desk. “Glad to see you again, Fräulein Kriegshammer.” He bestowed her with a broad smile.

  She mirrored his and hoped he believed that seeing him pleased her.

  “I apologize I interrupted your work, but without you, as it seems to me, we are helpless.” He waited for her reaction and getting none, continued, “At least today.”

  “At your service, Herr Hammerer.”

  “You’ll accompany Herr Pshinskiy to help him in his talks with the local population.” He looked over her shoulder at the man who had brought her here. “Herr Pshinskiy will fill you in on the way to the first village, Markovshina.”

  “Jawohl—Yes, Herr Hauptsturmführer,” he responded.

  The road to Markovshina was all pits and ditches. Herr Pshinskiy sat in the passenger seat in front of her, interrupting the silence by confident remarks when the driver seemed lost.

  At their first stop, at the hut that before the occupation most likely harbored the Kolkhoz administration, stood about twenty residents, mostly women, children, and a couple of old men, encircled from three sides by German soldiers clenching their hands on their guns.

  After exchanging greetings with a middle-aged man who introduced himself as a village elder, Herr Pshinskiy and Ulya climbed the four-step wooden stair. Leaning to her, he uttered, “Please help me out if I happen to confuse some words.” With a strange melancholy in his eyes, Pshinskiy took a look around then cleared his throat into a snow-white handkerchief and only after that started delivering his speech.

  “Esteemed villagers! Allow me to tell you that the Red Army suffers losses and enormous casualties and soon will be crushed. The bandits who call themselves partisans disseminate false propaganda and harm you more than they harm the German Army.” For an instant, he fell silent and stared at Ulya as though asking if his Russian was good enough. Although it was perfect, there was something strange in how he chose the phrases as though orating for a constituent assembly. Ulya assumed his way of talking may have seemed odd for the listeners.

  “Respected villagers! The German administration is concerned the bandits deprive you of the output of your hard work. Please, don’t trust them. We, as your liberators from the Bolshevik oppression, are against any practices that may exacerbate tensions in the area or any military actions that may harm innocent civilians. You . . .” He spoke with great enthusiasm, but the way his gaze shifted downward made Ulya wonder if he believed in what he was saying. “We encourage you to report any unlawful activity and advise the administration about your fellow villagers who help partisans. Anyone who withholds information and with it helps the bandits, will be dealt with by the laws of wartime.”

  The same procedure was repeated in Zagorye. Khotimichi was their last stopping place.

  “Back to the city,” Pshinskiy commanded the driver and, visibly spent by his mission, climbed after Ulya into the back seat. After a few minutes, he turned his head to her. “Fräulein Kriegshammer, what do you think about my speech? Was it to some extent persuasive?”

  “Unquestionably, it
was, Herr Pshinskiy,” Ulya said, bringing vivacity to her voice.

  “I wish Herr Hammerer would hear me speak.”

  “I report to Herr Hammerer on all my activities related to the assignments I get from him,” Ulya stated, though it was the first time he’d ordered her directly.

  “And?” He looked into her eyes and his hand landed on hers.

  She slipped her hand away. “You were irresistible, Herr Pshinskiy. I have never witnessed anybody talking to the locals so eloquently. You moved people by your genuine concern about their wellbeing.”

  “I was moved too. Poor people. They suffered under the Stalin regime a great deal.”

  Ulya saw his eyes damping with tears. “Herr Pshinskiy?” Peculiarly transfixed, she caught herself staring at him.

  “Ah, Fräulein. If not the Bolshevik Revolution . . . Khotimichi. Ah, Khotimichi.” He heaved a heartbreaking sigh. “The land belonged to my family.” He turned away and did not utter a single word till he stretched his hand to help her climb from the car at the door of the Civil Council.

  After seeing the half-burnt villages and the people in rags and tatters, their eyes hollow, she was not especially eager to hear another Polizei discussion. But no such luck. Voices reached her from the yard.

  “You look so exhausted, Fedot. Too much Harilka yesterday?”

  “Go to hell, you. I would like to see if after what we’ve done yesterday Harilka or any schnapps would help you. You must have gone with us to the Black Pond.”

  “It’s where we shot the Underground scums last year? It serves them right. But they didn’t learn the lesson. They are multiplying like cockroaches. If it would be in my power, I’d corral them all in the Black Pond and bury them. Alive.”

  Their voices went down and for some time, Ulya could hear only snatches of phrases: “The prisoners from Fifth Regiment stalag.” “So, they dug their own graves?” “We did a clean job, just shot them.” And a single retort, “They are people like us.”

  She rubbed her temples—lately she suffered from headaches because she had to concentrate hard to understand what they were talking about, especially some words in Byelorussian confused her.

  They continued arguing, but they hissed the words in such a low tone, she couldn’t catch anything anymore. Suddenly, a voice rang out distinctly, “All sent to the other world by our hands.” And the last she could hear was, “Earth was groaning, moaning.”

  40

  Natasha

  April 1942

  In her dream, Natasha saw a child stretching his arms toward her, and she wanted to take him, but where her arms were supposed to be, there was nothing. When did she have her period? was the first clear thought as she jerked from her sleep. End of January? Or later? What was that nauseating sensation she got in the last two weeks?

  The day passed in thrilled anticipation. What if she was pregnant? With Serezha’s child! And yet, she knew it was the worst time to have a baby. She’d talk to her aunt before she told Serezha, she decided.

  Upon returning home, she stormed the room and from the threshold cried out, “Aunty! I have—” She found her in bed. When she lifted her eyes at Natasha, pain flickered in them.

  “Something tortures you, Aunt Anna? What is it?”

  “Let me alone. I . . . They . . . I just must not . . .” She burst in tears. “Murderers! Accursed fascists! How I hate them.” She screamed in agony again and again.

  Natasha darted to the kitchen and returned with water. “Drink.”

  After her aunt emptied the glass, she uttered, “I feel better.”

  “You can tell me. I promise I won’t tell anybody.”

  Clamming her lips as though trying to prevent herself from opening them, she shook her head. “I can’t keep it to myself anymore. I just can’t.” After a few long minutes, she continued in sinking tones. “They keep transporting children from children’s houses. From Polotsk. From other places. We have to check them before they—” She grabbed Natasha’s hand. “They are emaciated, yes, but comparatively healthy.”

  “Why then if they are healthy?”

  Then, like a dam broke, “They bleed them out. They murder our children so they can save their soldiers.” A glazed look of despair spread over her face. “Tell me, what can we do? What? How can we boot these three times accursed Fritzes from our land?”

  What was there to say? “Aunty, you calm down now. We’ll discuss it some other day.” She wrapped her arm around her aunt’s shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling how nausea came up to her throat and how tears gathered on her lashes. It was the worst time to tell her aunt what she so much wanted to share with her.

  They sat in silence, minutes ticking by, each thinking her own thoughts. I should talk to Serezha about Aunty, she decided. As an experienced surgical nurse and working in the German hospital, her aunt could help the partisans a lot. To avenge for the kids whose blood they drained. For all the evil they did.

  41

  Ulya

  June-July 1942

  Ulya turned to the knock to see an SS Sturmann erect in the door frame. “Fräulein Kriegshammer? You are summoned to Hauptsturmführer Hammerer. I will escort you.”

  She did not need any escort. By now, she knew the way to the Einsatzkommando-9 headquarters. The day that had started so well—sunny but not hot like the previous days—promised to change to something unpleasant.

  As ten minutes later she and her escort stood face to face with Hammerer, he motioned to the soldier to remain at the door and extended his hand for a shake. “Fräulein Kriegshammer! So nice to see you again. Much to my regret, it’s just about work. I personally am in need of your help in translating.”

  “My pleasure, Herr Hammerer. I thought Herr Schmiedecker—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “Ah, Herr Schmiedecker. He is no longer with us.” He raised his eyes and arms up in a theatrical gesture.

  What did they do to him?

  It was frightening how much he was able to read her thoughts. “He did not live up to our expectations,” and, obviously not going to elaborate, checked his watch then continued. “Now, getting down to business. We are going to interrogate or rather have a heart-to-heart talk with those former members of the Soviet armed forces who volunteered to serve the Third Reich. Your responsibility is formal: to translate my questions and their answers.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Hauptsturmführer.”

  He turned to the huge metal safe that stood by the wall at arm’s length from his table, took a key from his britches pocket and, obscuring the safe door from her line of sight, cracked it open. Some files from it disappeared into his briefcase. He pointed at a small end table on which a pad and a fountain pen lay. “Pick those up and follow me.”

  In front of the building, a Horch waited with the motor running. Offering her to climb into the backseat, he took the seat beside her.

  The car sped off through the bumpy streets. As a formation of troops blocked the way, the driver slowed down. At Hammerer’s deep sigh, Ulya turned her head to him and froze. Her glance fell on the gallows erected about twenty meters away from the roadway, a lonely female figure dangling from it. She recognized her instantly. She wanted to look away but couldn’t.

  “Fräulein Kriegshammer?” Hammerer’s voice jerked her back to the reality. He half-turned his head to the gallows. “These lonely she-wolves . . . When they leave their tangled woods, they end up—” He studied her with curiosity. “Kriegshammer, you are one of them,” and after a pregnant silence, continued, “but of course, I don’t mean you are like them, the bandits. But you know their mentality. What do you think could help to eradicate resistance? What are your opinions about our methods? Why are they not working?”

  “I have no opinions, Herr Hammerer, and may I ask what methods do you mean?”

  “The hanging, the shooting.”

  “Russians are not afraid of dying.”

  “Ah, really?”

  They drove on in a strained and unpleasant silence. Time pass
ed. She felt as if a noose compressed her throat, making it hard to breathe. Rita. Rita. All the way to the point of their destination, she felt such emptiness, such fatigue, as if she had been squeezed dry.

  In the meantime, they drove up to an area confined by a fence of about 3.5-meters high, topped with barbed wire, with watchtowers at equal distance from each other. All the vegetation had been cleared around it for ten meters or so. Most likely, Herr Hammerer was not a stranger here as his car passed the checkpoint without being checked. It stopped at the front steps of a one-story brick building, Commandant’s Office, as the sign on the door read. Another row of the wired fence separated it from the squat buildings some two hundred meters away.

  In the Commandant’s office, an Oberleutnant greeted them in a friendly manner and escorted them to a room, the door courteously held ajar by a soldier. Inside, Hammerer took a seat at the desk and pulled from his briefcase some files. He motioned Ulya to a chair behind a smaller table and took his time leafing through his papers.

  The sound of hobnailed boots and wooden clogs approached and an Oberwachmann SS appeared at the door, a submachine gun across his chest. In front of him, an ashen-faced prisoner, reduced to a pitiful condition slouched, his eyes to the floor.

  Hammerer looked him up and down. “Full name, nationality, date of birth, place of birth, education, Communist Party association, a branch of the military, army rank. Were you repressed by the Soviet power? Please translate.” He turned to Ulya.

  Visibly flabbergasted by so many questions, the prisoner looked at Ulya.

  “Tell Herr Hauptsturmführer your name, please,” she encouraged with a gentle tone.

  “Anton Petrovich Sukhov is my name. I was born in April 1923 . . . in Siberia.”